


like water in your hands

by velvetcrowbars



Category: Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Spoilers, Unresolved Emotional Tension, i think ryuzo loved jin but in his own complicated & fucked up way!, it's good shit!, this could be read as platonic (mostly) (but it's not)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcrowbars/pseuds/velvetcrowbars
Summary: Jin’s never been malleable. He is strong, and merciful, and ruthless – but nobody could break him in a way he didn’t want. A blade will always be a blade no matter how one bends it. A sword is created for blood, for life and the taking of it.Maybe they were never so different, after all.Jin has always been a bit different. As the years pass, Ryuzo figures out how.
Relationships: Sakai Jin & Ryuzo, Sakai Jin/Ryuzo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 78





	like water in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> tw for: animal death/injury, as well as (canonical) major character death. if you've played the game past act 2 you should be safe as far as spoilers go!
> 
> a quick note: i did my first playthrough with the jpn dub and didn't know jin's horse was supposed to be a stallion, so i've always thought of her as a mare (i think historically stallions and mares were used in equal proportion, but generally stallions are far more high strung and difficult to manage. however as far as feudal japan goes i truly have No Idea though and could find no readily available information. ANYWAY) as an ex-crazy horse girl it made sense to me, so that's why Kage is referred to as a mare for the purposes of this fic.

On the day Sakai Jin is born, foxes dance with fireflies.

When the twilight of that autumn brings a child, the village whispers of it for weeks. It's a well-spoken omen, a sign of prosperous times to come. The god’s messengers had given their blessing, and Lady Sakai was always known as gracious, kind in a manner many had never known before. Her child would be much the same – a gentle soul. A powerful warrior. A good lord, when the time comes. Merciful and strong.

At the end of the following spring, it rains for weeks. The lake floods so high it near takes the homes set back from the bank. They go without fresh fish for days on end. The ground is a sopped rag beneath their feet. And yet still, the rain rages. Ryuzo loses his father to the violent river’s thrashing before he even comes into this world, long after Susanoo-no-Mikoto’s wrath has since subsided.

Ryuzo is born on a clouded summer morning, and the village is quiet all save for the sound of rushing water.

-

“You look like a scarecrow.”

Sun lands on him like dapples, little coves of light that splotch his skin. Two summers Ryuzo’s gone, pushing him from his mind – two winters he’s looked north and wondered how Kubara falls look when frozen from atop Castle Shimura. Two summers, and yet–

And yet here he stands, suddenly. As if the time were nothing. As if he’d been at Ryuzo’s back all along. Mud splatters up the side of his traveler’s cloak, coats the back of his hands resting on the hilt of his katana. All the fabric’s threadbare, patched, frayed at the edges. It stirs something in the back of Ryuzo’s mind, a thought that’d sat collecting dust since he was a child.

_What if a place at his side wasn’t something to be earned?_

Ryuzo shakes his head, reaches to grasp Jin’s shoulder in the same breath. The bulk of muscle is firm beneath his grip, stronger than what his memory recalls. _Ridiculous._

“You’ve looked better, yourself.”

-

He remembers the day Jin’s mother dies.

Or more, he remembers the day a half-moon passed, when the message drifts down to the village – of the _daimyo_ son’s disappearance, of his father’s endless night-long search to find him. Springs are chilly in Omi village, as they have been since the beginning of everything. The sea wind breaks itself upon them and scatters, a cold that slices straight to the bone. They’d found him small and shivering at daybreak, curled into an old animal hollow amongst the tree roots, the ground around him still warm.

Some speak of the forest spirit’s protection, of the doe shielding his small body between the heat of their own. Others know better than to question whether Sakai Kazumasa’s only son was saved by circumstance or divine providence.

Ryuzo isn’t permitted to see him. Were it the _daimyo_ standing guard he might – but the _jito_ is another matter. Jin’s uncle has always looked at Ryuzo with a clench to his jaw, a hardened flint in his eyes that likens to how a falcon sees a vole. An unworthy prey, a source of blood. A source of mess. And Ryuzo knows even then, before he sees his ninth summer, before the weight of his heart settles into his chest: any place in that world – in _Jin’s_ world – is one he’ll have to make on his own.

He manages to squeeze through a gap in the Sakai estate’s outer wall after the sun sets, having kept his distance from Lord Shimura’s sight for three nights and counting. Perhaps it was fortunate the fishing had been poor the past season – were he bulky as the other spoiled village children he may not have fit. It had been his secret entrance, and Jin’s secret exit, for as long as Ryuzo’s known his own name. Losing it would change things.

 _Not us,_ Ryuzo thinks and he clambers up the edge of the house, kicking his shoes off into the dirt. He crawls on quiet hands and knees to the sliding door two down from the left, knocking his knuckles thrice, then twice more against the wood floor by the door’s edge. _Never us._

He waits a moment before he knocks again – the same pattern, the same code just soft enough to keep suspicion at bay. Quiet enough to be the wind against the boards to anyone not listening close.

“Jin,” he whispers, his cheek pressed to the seam of the door. “ _Jin_.”

The door flicks open a sliver. Ryuzo sees Jin’s nose before the rest of him; the pale, softened slope of it. His eyes come next; wide and bright, holding the pearlescent full moon in the dark of his irises

Ryuzo grins. “Hello, _Young Master_.”

The door slides so fast it meets the end of the wall with a _tamp_. Jin’s still in his kosode, black as a starless sky. A single, low-burning candle casts just enough light to color his back in a watery yellow.

“I told you there’s no need to call me that,” Jin says.

The scrunch nestled between his brow is familiar, and Ryuzo stops holding his breath. Relief lets him smile in earnest now, a little more firm in the idea that Jin’s soul is still with him.

“Yes, yes, whatever you say. Are you going to invite me in?”

Jin lets out a short sigh through his nose, but scoots aside to let Ryuzo crawl past him. He moves the door pane but doesn’t close it, the moonlight bright enough to illuminate what shadows the flickering fire leaves. Ryuzo folds his legs, reaching inside the wrapped sleeve of his shirt. He lets his hand rest there, watching as Jin sits back on his heels, straightens his spine, flattens his hands against his knees. He breathes as if someone may come around the corner any moment and frighten it out of him. They both look out at the wall surrounding the house, the grass swaying like a rustling sea around it.

“Are you alright?” Ryuzo asks, once Jin seems ready to answer.

Jin’s smile is brittle, cracked at the edges. “My father says I’m not to leave the estate until the next full moon.”

Ryuzo keeps the grimace from crossing his mouth. Lord Sakai’s commands shouldn’t be spoken against beneath his own roof – even Ryuzo knows that much. He’s unsure how Jin would react now to what he’d like to say. Looking at the swelling beneath his eyes, Ryuzo realizes he doesn’t want to know.

“I asked if you were alright.”

“Oh,” and here Jin’s smile is surer. “Yes. I’m not hurt.”

 _That’s not what I asked,_ is what Ryuzo wishes to say. _Not your body or your pride or your heart. Are **you** alright?_

But even now, Ryuzo knows it would be fruitless to press. Jin’s made up his mind – and between the two of them, he has always been the more stubborn. He will speak of it when he’s ready. When Jin wishes to speak of his night in the woods, whether it be ten days or ten years from now, Ryuzo feels certain he’ll be there. Even if it isn’t his place to hear it.

“Good,” he says, feeling the verity like an imprint on his heart. It’ll have to do for now.

The night lengthens around them. The grasses’ shadow grows beneath the moon, sketched lines of watered charcoal beneath an iridescent canvas. Fireflies float in lazy circles through the darkness. The wind sends the chimes hung from the estate roof tinkling.

“I’m sorry.” Ryuzo breaks the silence. His voice sounds small as the words leave his mouth. “About Lady Sakai.”

Jin whips his head to look at him, turning his gaze back to the floor just as quickly. When he speaks, the wind chimes go still, the wind slackened to nothing.

“She used to tell me the birds were messengers. They could help you, if you listened well enough. They’re good at finding things. Lost things.”

Ryuzo’s seen the little golden birds perched on low branches near the river. Sometimes he’d watch them flit over the water down to the lake. Sometimes he’d wonder how many villager’s bone coated the muddy bottom.

“I followed them. The birds. I thought...” Jin’s voice is hoarse – whether with restraint or grief, it’s difficult to say. He clears his throat, and Ryuzo waits for him, as he always does. “Maybe she wasn’t…gone.”

A stab of pity pierces Ryuzo’s chest.

“Jin…”

A pressure seizes upon Ryuzo’s empty loosened sleeve. Jin’s fingers grip the fabric as if it is all that keeps him tethered to the floor. He’s trembling. Ryuzo stares at him, ducks to meet his gaze, but Jin holds firm even as the tears begin to glisten in his eyes.

“My father says I have shed enough tears. But I think of her lost in the forest somewhere, alone, and I–” He sniffles, the sob stifling somewhere deep in his chest. “Do you think I’ll ever see her again?”

The monks from the temple would say yes. Perhaps not in the same manner or way, but in bits and pieces. A sum of our parts meeting again, familiar in an unfamiliar place. And we will be happy again, even if we cannot remember why. Ryuzo’s mind turns again to the bottom of the river.

He swallows, knowing whatever he truly wishes to say would be insufficient. It’d be kinder in the long run to say nothing at all – but that is Jin’s strong suit. Not his.

“I don’t know,” he says, unsure of what else to do. Jin’s tears fall, silent on the tatami mats. Ryuzo reaches out, tentative, to touch their fingertips together.

“I don’t know.”

-

There is an old story of an island made of the sixth drip off a steel-starred lance tip. Izanagi churned, dribbled it over the ocean like milky ink, watched how it settled and took its crooked shape among the rest, a broken-edged piece of the puzzle. An island with land that listens.

Tsushima is made from stone that sings. A sea that whispers, churned from the froth, cupped in Izanami’s hands. The gods run their touch across the twin mountain peaks, keep a watchful eye over the marshlands of the north and golden maples of the south. Their children hide beneath its river rocks, wait for spring beneath the snow. Each rustling wind through the grass points towards a secret. Every moonrise a lover’s gesture, every storm a message. Their home has never been a quiet place.

Ryuzo has spent his entire life trying to hear it.

-

“Where did you _find_ them?”

The edge of Jin’s lips quirk up. “If I told you it would never be a surprise.”

Ryuzo squints for a moment before taking the perfect persimmon from Jin’s offering hand. The shell of his fingers lingers against the calluses forming in the lines of Jin’s palm. They’re barely eighteen, but the weight of the number, and all it entails, settles between them like a shackle. They both pretend not to notice.

“Let me guess.” Ryuzo stabs his bokken into the softened earth and twirls the persimmon around, inspecting it without truly looking. “Was it the birds again?”

Jin shrugs, only it isn’t truly shrug – his shoulders are wound too tight, his chest too rigid. Like he’s forgotten how. He’d returned from Castle Shimura just two mornings ago, and the evidence is in how straight he carries his spine.

“Perhaps,” Jin says.

“ _Perhaps?_ ” Ryuzo echoes. “We’ve grown a bit too old to be following animals about.”

“You’re never too old for…contemplation.”

“Oh, is that what you were doing? Contemplation led you to the only tree still bearing fruit on the entire island?”

Jin raises a brow, as if Ryuzo’s just asked him a question. “You should try following them yourself, then. See if the stories are true.”

“Yes, so then one may lead me off a cliff to my death.”

“If you’re unlucky.” Jin smiles and it, too, is a tentative thing. “Or unfavorable.”

Ryuzo chokes on his laugh, casting a look of disbelief Jin’s direction. He doesn’t look at him head-on – it isn’t worth the risk of seeing Jin smirk. Part of Ryuzo’s role in this is never giving him the satisfaction, always shying away from the reverence and obedience the Sakai clan rightfully deserves.

“Ass,” he says.

“So I’ve been called.” Jin begins peeling the persimmon’s skin away with his thumbnail, focused and meticulous. “By you. Twice already today, I believe.”

Ryuzo takes a bite of his own, and the fruit is like sweetened silk on his tongue. “And I’ll say it a third.”

“No hesitation?”

“For you?” Ryuzo nudges their shoulders together, watches Jin slice a gash against the persimmon’s delicate skin with his jostling. “Never.”

-

In retrospect, it’s easy to see how it would end.

Lord Nagao’s invitation to them both had been cause for nervous excitement. They’d spent the months prior preparing together when Jin would return to his family estate from Castle Shimura. Most hours of daylight they sparred, or raced among the hillside, took meals together when they could. Whatever tension was there they kept at bay with swordsmanship, by drinking till they stumbled to the lake to swim naked in its chilly center. Sometimes, Jin would touch him and it felt different – like it could be something else. They spent those months standing on a precipice without knowing, both of them too scared to peek from under the blindfold and see what might lie on the other side.

Perhaps Ryuzo had been a fool for thinking it would make any difference. Perhaps he’d always been the fool, for thinking Jin’s mercy – which he gave so freely, so generously, would extend to him. Perhaps it had hardly anything to do with Jin at all, and more to the fact that Jin’s father had a cemetery when Ryuzo’s didn’t even have a grave. It is a difficult to remember his father when Jin smiles at him like he does.

As he does the night before the tournament’s start. The attending lords all say Jin looks like his mother with his father’s disposition, chuckling and commiserating amongst themselves. Ryuzo keeps meeting Jin’s eyes over the table, laughing at them in their own way, without any words.

 _“I’m glad you’re here,”_ Jin says, before they part for the evening.

The next morning, he swings his blade as if Ryuzo’s blade is the one that struck his father down. It isn’t a yield – it isn’t even a defeat. It is a complete and utter loss. In all the months, years, they’d spent together, Ryuzo wonders when he missed it: when they became just as everyone else. When Jin’s reputation began to matter more than what Ryuzo feels for him.

 _Not you and me,_ Ryuzo thinks as he watches Jin drive his blade down and down and down for the final blow, straight at his breastbone, the eyes of a wolf in his skull. He thinks he doesn’t recognize him. He cannot look away.

_Never us._

-

The horse doesn’t like him.

She’s a young thing, likely not more than six years old. Her coat’s dark and dappled as a stone river bottom, her mane and tail still more black than white, and Jin spends the slower part of their ride to camp scratching gently at her withers. She tries to take a chunk out of Ryuzo’s forearm when he dismounts too close to her flank. He manages to jump back just in time to avoid bloodshed, his own horse sidestepping with a soft grunt.

“ _Kage,_ ” Jin says low, coaxing as a mother might to a child. “Behave.”

The beast bobs her head, bit jostling in her mouth. When Jin dismounts he lands with care and little noise, his hand soothing down the slope of her neck with each move he makes. He keeps the reins over her head, and when Jin steps a few feet away to pluck an arrow buried in the ground, Kage follows.

Ryuzo recalls watching Jin’s childhood horse do the same since it was a foal – how the dark-coated yearling trotted after him, long-legged and clumsy, huffing in Jin’s face when he lay in the tall grass. A strange pang hits his chest with the realization that horse’s body likely still lay on the beaches of Komoda. 

Kage’s nostrils flare when she cranes her neck, the tip of her nose brushing Jin’s back, inquisitive.

Although, some things truly never do change.

“An appropriate name,” Ryuzo calls, making sure to keep a wide berth between himself and Kage’s hooves. “Your little shadow.”

Jin turns the arrow over in his hands: Mongol, the fletching brown and freckled like their falcons. A grimace tugs at the edge of his mouth, but with Kage’s nudge at his elbow the look softens. Ryuzo dares a step forward only to be met with Kage’s swinging hindquarters, her tail flicking in agitation. Jin grabs hold of the reins without a second thought, pushing her flank over to his other side, away from Ryuzo. He does it with such clear practice and ease Ryuzo must stifle his laughter. Jin doesn’t even bother to drop the arrow.

“I do adore her company,” he says after a moment, snapping the arrow shaft and tossing it to the ground. “She is a kind soul. I couldn’t have asked for a more loyal companion.”

Kage – who seems to have recovered from her displeasure at Ryuzo’s mere existence in her vicinity, turns her attention back to nosing around Jin’s pockets, scrubbing her muddied-brown eye against the slope of his shoulder. The bit snags on his armor with a harsh and scattered clink. Ryuzo watches as the creature nuzzles at the loosened hair behind Jin’s ear, his fingers caught between her flapping lips and–more likely than not–her sharp, slimy teeth. 

“Yes,” is what he settles on, after a moment. “Clearly.”

Kage huffs as she drops her head, her sharp puff of breath stirring the dirt. Ryuzo doesn’t fully turn his back to her until he’s a safe distance away. He notices Jin’s eyes flicking to her every so often, still watchful even as she nibbled gently on the sparse patches of grass nearby. Ryuzo spots the extra sets of track near where she grazes, following them with his eyes.

“You always did love the stables,” Ryuzo says, keeping his gaze on the ridge ahead, for now. “I seem to recall you enjoyed sleeping there, even.”

Jin snorts. Ryuzo almost startles – it’s been years since he’s heard him laugh as when his uncle wasn’t watching.

“I took a single nap beside my sick horse. Once. When we were fifteen.”

“You had a rash on your backside from the bedding for weeks.”

“Of course _that_ is what you remember,” Jin mutters, but Ryuzo knows the smile he’s pretending to stifle beneath it is genuine.

Ryuzo smiles, closed-mouth. “Somebody must keep you humble.”

“A pastime you perform quite well. I’m grateful you still keep up with it.”

And then Ryuzo’s truly smiling, the sour tinge of it on his tongue. Something akin to anger pops behind his chest, something raging that pounds against his heart as beast would the bars of a cage. It had been quiet for so long – a bitterness always lurking in the hollowed-out part of his sword arm, where he kept his hatred. Jin is no longer the boy who ran with his colt in the village fields. Ryuzo is no longer the boy who chased after him.

“And you are still foolish to think so,” Ryuzo says, moving to mount his horse once more. Jin swings his foot into his stirrup in turn, a question forming on his lips when he, no doubt, begins to feel it too. Ryuzo doesn't give him the chance to ask.

“They went north.” He digs his heels into his horse’s sides. “We should move.”

-

Ryuzo remembers. He wishes he could stop.

He remembers how the cloudless sky hung over the forest was blue as the sea in summer, how the wind tugged at them, snagged on all the holes in his clothes like fish hooks and _pulled_. It bit at his bare skin, the chill through the trees a creature with teeth. Autumn dawned over Toyotama like a wave, and Ryuzo spent the whole outing pretending not to shiver in the watery afternoon sun. Jin didn’t – and he didn't need to. The linen he wore was new, a red deep as a bloom of equinox flowers. A gift from a visiting lord, perhaps even his uncle. He’d offered his new cloak to Ryuzo before they’d left the village – an honor Ryuzo had refused staunchly, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his mouth.

They’d been hunting for a handful of hours when they come upon it.

The sounds of struggle had drawn them closer, kept them slunk low to the ground, the tamp of their sandals softer among the growing blanket of leaves, blushed golden with death. A scattering of boulders lined the clearing as Jin crested the hill before him, and they crouched with just the top of their heads peeking down into the grass. Something thrashed below, a bleating that comes muted, muffled and desperate.

The fawn had fallen into a crumpled heap along the rocks below, its leg contorted, tongue a sliver of pink poking from its mouth. Blood smears its speckled flank, leaves sticking to its fur like a splotch of sunflower paint. 

Ryuzo reaches back, hovering the tips of his fingers over an arrow’s fletching. He isn’t a particularly good shot – his arms are too thin and spindly, his chest not broad enough to support the bow’s weight – but a still target is as easy as they come.

Jin’s vaulting over their hiding spot and skittering half-down the slope before Ryuzo can begin to finish the thought. He throws a palm out behind him, shoves it into Ryuzo’s face without turning around.

“Wait here.”

“Jin.” Ryuzo follows him, slipping as his feet touch the boulder’s other side. “Jin, wait!”

He reaches out to grab Jin’s sleeve, but the fabric slips through his chill-numb fingers like water. Jin’s crouching at the fawn’s side by the time Ryuzo’s gathered himself enough to walk properly down the hill’s incline.

Jin pulls a small knife from his waist, unsheathing it with a soft slide. Ryuzo peers over his shoulder, not wanting to draw too close. Animals are unpredictable, especially so when injured. The fawn’s chest heaves at a pace far too rapid to maintain, its eyes huge, unfathomably darkened with pain. The knife glints in the sun, gripped in Jin’s small, white-knuckled hand.

Ryuzo almost grabs his arm on reflex as Jin begins to cut away at his new cloak. He does move to crouch beside him, daring to involve himself in something turning more foolish by the second.

“What are you doing?!”

Jin strips section of fabric lengthwise. The going is slow and messy, the knife dull. It is hardly sharp enough to cut through thick plant stalks let alone cloth.

“It’s hurt,” he says. “I can help it.”

Ryuzo doesn’t speak. He can’t stop looking at Jin’s clothes – the clean woven lines hacked into pieces with his clumsy, unsteady hand. He shivers as the sunlight shadows lengthen, twilight bearing down on them. It’ll be cold tonight. Even with his blanket beside the hearth, his teeth will chatter.

Jin moves to begin wrapping the fawn’s twisted leg. Ryuzo wraps his fingers around his arm.

“It isn’t just hurt, Jin.” _It’s dying._

The words don’t appear to sink in, at first. Jin shifts to look Ryuzo square in the face, his brow drawn together. “I can save it.”

“Maybe.”

“Its life is precious. We should at least try–”

“And let it suffer?”

“We could keep it from suffering!” Jin almost shouts. Ryuzo struggles to keep from drawing away from him. “But only if we help it!”

“And if it dies? What then?”

Spite leaks into the words as Ryuzo near spits them in Jin’s face. On any other afternoon he’d go along with it – he doesn’t wish to kill an innocent creature either. Ryuzo doesn’t enjoy killing, but he looks at the tattered edge of Jin’s new clothes, the clothes _made_ for him stitch by steady stitch, and Ryuzo is helpless to the wave of unnamable frustration that washes over him. It drowns him, throttles his throat until it constricts. His face grows hot. Ryuzo realizes he’s going to cry.

Jin yanks his sleeve from Ryuzo’s grip. Ryuzo watches as Jin bundles the fawn up with a gentle hand. It’s so weak it hardly struggles within the wrap of Jin’s sleeve.

Jin stands, and Ryuzo must lift his face to meet his gaze when he finally says,

“Then, at least we will have done all we could.”

Ryuzo doesn’t follow Jin home. He sits in the spot until the sun sets in full, as the cold creeps in under his clothes in earnest, as the fawn’s blood soaks deep into the soft of the earth below.

-

Castle Shimura is a roiling pit of rot around them. The courtyard outside has long gone silent. The Khan’s long since gone. All that remains is them. Them, and the corpses cooling in the dirt, their blood seeping in to stain the castle grounds.

“I’ve lost everything–” The words fall from his mouth, tumble to the ground between them. They taste metallic between his teeth. “Everything. Except you.”

He dares a step closer. Jin’s face twists. It’s the closest to a snarl Ryuzo’s ever seen him give and it’s–satisfying. Vindicating. A confession all its own. His eyes are black-water pools, so dark they swallow the torchlight when his lip curls up.

 _He deserves this,_ says the gnarled hole folding into Ryuzo’s gut. _A part of you has always wanted to hurt him like this._

Jin raises his arm, hovering the tip of his sword over the hollow Ryuzo’s throat.

 _Ah,_ Ryuzo cannot help but think. _There you are._

 _There_ is the Jin that drove desperation into his chest like a knife blade, that sank his teeth into the only soft spot in him left and _tore_. It’s the Jin from Lord Nagao’s duel only sharpened, sparked – honed into something else. Lord Shimura had tried to sculpt him in his image for years, molding Jin with the careful hands of a potter’s perfect square of clay. Perhaps he even thought he had succeeded. Ryuzo had a feeling he hadn’t – or perhaps he’d hoped so, in secret somehow.

Jin’s never been malleable. He is strong, and merciful, and ruthless – but nobody could break him in a way he didn’t want. A blade will always be a blade no matter how one bends it. A sword is created for blood, for life and the taking of it.

Maybe they were never so different, after all.

-

The fawn doesn’t last four more sunrises.

Ryuzo finds Jin knelt over it in the corner of the garden, its breathing shallow, gums pallid. There’s something wrong with it – something more than the leg. It won’t eat, even with Yuriko’s herbs and clean, fresh water from the lake. The wound festers and the blood darkens, and all the while Jin keeps it from his father. Now, the fawn’s body grows colder by the hour.

 _I told you not to help it._ Ryuzo cannot help but scowl down at him, at the pale, placid half-moons of Jin’s closed eyelids. _You never listen to me. You never listen._

He kneels at Jin’s side, as he had that day in the forest. The fawn’s head rests in Jin’s lap. He strokes the soft shell of its ear with a reverence Ryuzo doesn’t quite understand. The knife is nowhere to be seen, but Ryuzo knows it must be lying somewhere, waiting.

Ryuzo settles, sitting in the dirt and pulling his knees up to his chin. He isn’t sure why he reaches out to stroke the fawn’s other ear. Maybe it’s too sad to bear all on its own. Maybe it’s because he’d want someone to do the same for him.

“You don’t need to be the one,” he whispers to his knees.

Beside him, Jin quakes – but it is only the breath of a tremor. If their shoulders weren’t touching, Ryuzo never would’ve noticed.

“I do. It has to be me” He utters it with such conviction Ryuzo near believes him. “I must be the one who ends it.”

-

His blood is on fire. Pain screeches through his insides, boils slow in his bones. The slashes from their duel feel like nothing – like maybe now Jin has made the decision to be gentle. The floor blurs. Ryuzo falls to his knees, droplets of blood turning to a gush water-falling into his lap.

“ _Jin_ ,” he chokes, because there’ll never be another chance. “ _Please._ ”

Ryuzo reaches for him on instinct, grappling with the slipshod fabric of the ghost, wondering how he doesn’t pass right through his fingers. How he doesn’t slip from Jin like water in his hands when he reaches to hold him in return. Jin meets him halfway. He always does.

Ryuzo watches as a streak slips beneath the mask’s obsidian curve, realizing belatedly that the last thing he’s ever going to see is Jin’s face on the verge of tears. He should ask for forgiveness, for absolution, but the idea is appalling when his tongue tastes of his own blood and viscera, when Jin is looking at him like a flood, like a devastation.

 _I wanted you to understand me,_ he doesn’t say. _I wanted you to understand how I wanted you._

“Goodbye, Ryuzo.”

And Jin slides the blade into his heart.

-

The Mongols circle them like sharks to bloodied water. He feels Jin’s back hit his own, firm as a blade. As steady and unerring as a pane of warmed steel. Jin speaks low, into that finite space left between them.

“Hold your ground,” he says.

The soldier in front of Ryuzo curls his lip up in a taunt, his saber spinning, catching the light in all the wrong places. From the corner of his eye, he can see the tip of Clan Sakai’s katana, a slip of silver against the grass. Ryuzo bites down on nothing, clenches his jaw until spite cracks between his teeth, floods his mouth.

“I always do.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is uh...something that's been rattling around in my brain since i finished+platinum'd the game a few weeks ago. was originally a jin character study but shifted to being more ryuzo-centric halfway through, so features quite a bit of personal hc to help flesh out & support the game's justifications for his decisions. there was more to this fic that i ended up cutting out for coherency sake, so maybe i'll frankenstein it into another jin/ryuzo fic w/ actual ship content in the future lol. who knows! certainly not me
> 
> i'm mostly just a scrub, but u can occasionally find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/snipmoonn)


End file.
